"Fantastic image": First part of the Euclid sky map published
Since spring, the ESA space telescope has been taking images of the firmament for its giant sky atlas. Now there is another foretaste of it.
The mosaic
(Image: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
More than a year after the launch of Euclid, the European Space Agency (ESA) has published the first section of the huge map of the sky that the space telescope is working on. The pieces, which were assembled into a mosaic and collected during 260 observations, show a section of the sky that covers about 500 times the area of the full moon. In total, this is one percent of the sky atlas that the space telescope is to create within more than six years. Even the small "teaser", as the ESA calls the image that has now been made public, contains around 100 million sources.
12 percent of the work done
(Image:Â ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
According to ESA, the image shows 14 million galaxies that are bright enough for Euclid to measure their gravitationally distorted shapes and deduce the distribution of dark matter in the universe. Researching this is one of the main tasks of the mission, and those responsible also hope to gain insights into the no less mysterious dark energy. "This fantastic image is the first part of a map that will reveal more than a third of the sky in six years," promises Euclid project scientist Valeria Pettorino from ESA. The image was presented at a space congress in Milan by ESA CEO Josef Aschbacher, among others.
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Euclid was launched into space at the beginning of July 2023. At its heart is a high-resolution telescope equipped with two cameras – one for the visible wavelength range and one for the near-infrared spectrum. The devices are intended to image the movements and shapes of galaxies and help to deduce the distance between galaxies. ESA wants to take a look into the past of the universe and explore its development over the past ten billion years. The device began its scientific work in February and has now completed around 12 percent of the survey. The parts of the mosaic that have now been made public were recorded between the end of March and the beginning of April.
Just two months ago, the ESA launched a citizen science project in which volunteers can classify the shapes of galaxies in Euclid images. To do this, they are shown unpublished images from the space telescope and are asked simple questions about the shape or signs of spiral arms. It is quite possible that they will also get to see previously undiscovered galaxies. The project is now almost 80 percent complete, with almost 120,000 volunteers having made around 500,000 classifications. The results of the citizen science project will also be used to train an AI algorithm called ZooBot, which will help to manage the large amounts of data in the future.
(mho)
